5 ms·

Winklevoss Twins Bitcoin ETF Rejected by SEC

77 points by chollida1 8y ago

21 8y ago
For those who don't follow, there is another set of ETFs still under active proposal by an ETF specialist company.
lee101 8y ago
The small news things like this can have decent impact on the price, would be good to setup some kind of sentiment based price predictions :D Checkout https://bitbank.nz https://bitbank.nz for some super up to date forecasts
- sctb 8y ago
  Please don't use Hacker News just to promote something.
paul7986 8y ago
Bitcoin was increasing and possibly because of this ETF news and that Coinbase was considering adding more crytpos. It went up to $8507 then I saw news SEC is now taking its time on making a decision. From that day it’s been sliding back down.
- arisAlexis 8y ago
  exactly the manipulators are USA media an not offshore...
antidaily 8y ago
Has it ever been discussed as to how much BTC the Winklevoss twins own?
- 21 8y ago
  > Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss won $65 million from the Facebook lawsuit, and invested $11 million of their payout into Bitcoin in 2013, amassing one of the largest portfolios of Bitcoin in the world — 1 percent of the entire currency’s dollar value equivalent, said the twins at the time. Their slice of the Bitcoin pie is now worth over $1 billion after Bitcoin surged past $10,000 last week to now trade at $11,100 https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/4/16732952/winklevoss-twins-bitcoin-billionaires-surge https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/4/16732952/winklevoss-twins... A comment from 2013 on HN saying it's hilarious that savvy investors like the Winklevosses would put money in such an obvious ponzi: > This is clearly illuminating the Ponzi-like elements of Bitcoin. As in a Ponzi scheme, early arrivals to the system earn easy money, funded by later arrivals. Tales of bitcoin fortunes draw more and more entry to the system, leading to large payoffs for second stage arrivals, attracting more speculators due to the media attention and very real money that has been made by early players. This continues until, oh, wait, bitcoins aren't so easy to mine anymore and there's no new wave of incoming money to pay of the next generation of miners. > The hilarious thing is that Bitcoin is quite transparent about exactly how it works, while a real Ponzi scheme goes to great lengths to hide this dynamic. Anyone can see this dynamic in the rising price and the increasing CPU time needed to mine a new coin. And yet, brilliant, savvy investors like the Winklevosses are somehow still getting involved... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5570422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5570422
  - everdev 8y ago
    I'd be so tempted to take my $32.5M and retire for life. Pretty gutsy to invest 17% of your wealth in a single early stage technology when they did. I guess retiring on $27M instead wouldn't be so bad either though if it bombs.
    - 21 8y ago
      Investing 17% when you are worth 65 mil is different than when you are worth 65 k. If you fail, you'll have just one vacation house in Miami instead of two. I could live with that.
      - 8y ago
ur-whale 8y ago
Worthy of note, this is not as clear-cut as one might think. Within the SEC, there are dissenting voices: https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/peirce-dissent-34-83723 https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/peirce-dissent-34-...
- 21 8y ago
  The issue seems to be "prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices" in the spot markets. Is stop hunting considered a manipulative practice? Because it's happening every day in bitcoin markets. But stop hunting also happens in the currency markets (which also have ETFs), albeit they are more sophisticated and tend to happen around news. I'm not talking about bucket shops, I'm talking about the real interbank market.
  - cryptobeanbaby 8y ago
    Are you suggesting that manipulation is okay, if it has historically happened in a regulated market?
  - ur-whale 8y ago
    How does stop hunting work in currency markets? If you want to go stop hunting, it seems you need to be able to push the price down somehow, no? On an unregulated BTC exchange, that's fairly easy to do (e.g. wash trading). Short of collusion between many high-level actors, how do you do that in the interbank market?
- cryptobeanbaby 8y ago
  >"For example, trading in bitcoin is electronic, which facilitates competition and price transparency." One of the main reasons this ETF was rejected is because many of the major exchanges like Bitfinex, BitMEX, Binance, and Kraken are alleged to be manipulators of spot price though wash trading, and front running their customers. >"[23] Bitcoin are interchangeable, so that a purchaser is sure to get exactly the same thing no matter where she purchases it." This is no longer true. Bitcoin transactions that have history tied to stolen funds, and illegal black market transactions will get your exchange account frozen and bank account flagged. ( see BTCe caught laundering MTGox funds https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/russian-criminal-mastermind-4bn-bitcoin-laundering-scheme-arrested-mt-gox-exchange-alexander-vinnik https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/russian-c... ) >[24] In addition, bitcoin mining is not geographically limited (except to the extent it migrates to places with cheap electricity), so it is not subject to geopolitical threats that plague other commodity markets. This is a naive and incorrect risk assessment. Any large ISP is in a position to interfere, suppress, and drop traffic. Chinese based Bitmain, the largest BTC ASIC mining manufacture and the top known mining pools based in China are currently controlling over 40% of network block activity.
arisAlexis 8y ago
there are many things that the CBOE application addresses differently
crypto-jeronimo 8y ago
For details, please, refer to the list of strong arguments discussed by Emin Gün Sirer, who is a Cornell University professor and blockchain researcher: https://twitter.com/el33th4xor/status/1022695497511841792 https://twitter.com/el33th4xor/status/1022695497511841792

77 points by chollida1 8y ago

21 8y ago

For those who don't follow, there is another set of ETFs still under active proposal by an ETF specialist company.

The small news things like this can have decent impact on the price, would be good to setup some kind of sentiment based price predictions :D Checkout https://bitbank.nz https://bitbank.nz for some super up to date forecasts

sctb 8y ago
Please don't use Hacker News just to promote something.

paul7986 8y ago

Bitcoin was increasing and possibly because of this ETF news and that Coinbase was considering adding more crytpos. It went up to $8507 then I saw news SEC is now taking its time on making a decision. From that day it’s been sliding back down.

arisAlexis 8y ago
exactly the manipulators are USA media an not offshore...

antidaily 8y ago

Has it ever been discussed as to how much BTC the Winklevoss twins own?

21 8y ago
> Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss won $65 million from the Facebook lawsuit, and invested $11 million of their payout into Bitcoin in 2013, amassing one of the largest portfolios of Bitcoin in the world — 1 percent of the entire currency’s dollar value equivalent, said the twins at the time. Their slice of the Bitcoin pie is now worth over $1 billion after Bitcoin surged past $10,000 last week to now trade at $11,100 https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/4/16732952/winklevoss-twins-bitcoin-billionaires-surge https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/4/16732952/winklevoss-twins... A comment from 2013 on HN saying it's hilarious that savvy investors like the Winklevosses would put money in such an obvious ponzi: > This is clearly illuminating the Ponzi-like elements of Bitcoin. As in a Ponzi scheme, early arrivals to the system earn easy money, funded by later arrivals. Tales of bitcoin fortunes draw more and more entry to the system, leading to large payoffs for second stage arrivals, attracting more speculators due to the media attention and very real money that has been made by early players. This continues until, oh, wait, bitcoins aren't so easy to mine anymore and there's no new wave of incoming money to pay of the next generation of miners. > The hilarious thing is that Bitcoin is quite transparent about exactly how it works, while a real Ponzi scheme goes to great lengths to hide this dynamic. Anyone can see this dynamic in the rising price and the increasing CPU time needed to mine a new coin. And yet, brilliant, savvy investors like the Winklevosses are somehow still getting involved... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5570422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5570422
- everdev 8y ago
  I'd be so tempted to take my $32.5M and retire for life. Pretty gutsy to invest 17% of your wealth in a single early stage technology when they did. I guess retiring on $27M instead wouldn't be so bad either though if it bombs.
  - 21 8y ago
    Investing 17% when you are worth 65 mil is different than when you are worth 65 k. If you fail, you'll have just one vacation house in Miami instead of two. I could live with that.
    - 8y ago

ur-whale 8y ago

Worthy of note, this is not as clear-cut as one might think. Within the SEC, there are dissenting voices: https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/peirce-dissent-34-83723 https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/peirce-dissent-34-...

21 8y ago
The issue seems to be "prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices" in the spot markets. Is stop hunting considered a manipulative practice? Because it's happening every day in bitcoin markets. But stop hunting also happens in the currency markets (which also have ETFs), albeit they are more sophisticated and tend to happen around news. I'm not talking about bucket shops, I'm talking about the real interbank market.
- cryptobeanbaby 8y ago
  Are you suggesting that manipulation is okay, if it has historically happened in a regulated market?
- ur-whale 8y ago
  How does stop hunting work in currency markets? If you want to go stop hunting, it seems you need to be able to push the price down somehow, no? On an unregulated BTC exchange, that's fairly easy to do (e.g. wash trading). Short of collusion between many high-level actors, how do you do that in the interbank market?
cryptobeanbaby 8y ago
>"For example, trading in bitcoin is electronic, which facilitates competition and price transparency." One of the main reasons this ETF was rejected is because many of the major exchanges like Bitfinex, BitMEX, Binance, and Kraken are alleged to be manipulators of spot price though wash trading, and front running their customers. >"[23] Bitcoin are interchangeable, so that a purchaser is sure to get exactly the same thing no matter where she purchases it." This is no longer true. Bitcoin transactions that have history tied to stolen funds, and illegal black market transactions will get your exchange account frozen and bank account flagged. ( see BTCe caught laundering MTGox funds https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/russian-criminal-mastermind-4bn-bitcoin-laundering-scheme-arrested-mt-gox-exchange-alexander-vinnik https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/russian-c... ) >[24] In addition, bitcoin mining is not geographically limited (except to the extent it migrates to places with cheap electricity), so it is not subject to geopolitical threats that plague other commodity markets. This is a naive and incorrect risk assessment. Any large ISP is in a position to interfere, suppress, and drop traffic. Chinese based Bitmain, the largest BTC ASIC mining manufacture and the top known mining pools based in China are currently controlling over 40% of network block activity.

arisAlexis 8y ago

there are many things that the CBOE application addresses differently

crypto-jeronimo 8y ago

For details, please, refer to the list of strong arguments discussed by Emin Gün Sirer, who is a Cornell University professor and blockchain researcher: https://twitter.com/el33th4xor/status/1022695497511841792 https://twitter.com/el33th4xor/status/1022695497511841792